a) You could place the downloadable file in the ROOT.war directory (if you told me which version of JBoss AS I could give you the exact location, but a find within the service configuration directory should locate it)

b) You could deploly your EAR, and it's embedded WAR, as exploded directories. Then you could place the file in your WAR directory.

Looks like a letter casing mismatch (test.pdf vs Test.pdf). What is the real name of the file (test.pdf or Test.pdf), and what is the actual URL you used? And are you running on Linux - if you are then casing matters.

Also, just to double-check, your host's name is "www.mydomain.com" and you configured JBoss AS to listen to port 80. right?

Or are you running Apache HTTP at port 80 and having it filter and forward the requests?

Here is the full path of my PDF file: /opt/jbia/jboss-4.2.3.GA/server/admin/deploy/jboss-web.deployer/ROOT.war/test.pdf

Serving Static External Files in recent 4.x versions of jboss

This works for Jboss 4.2.x and probably other versions as well.

Step 1 (optional): Copy a default web.xml from <JBOSS_HOME>/server/<config-name>/deploy/http-invoker.sar/invoker.war/WEB-INF and place it in your external directory, for example: /home/pgib/images/WEB-INF

Step 2: Edit <JBOSS_HOME>/server/<config-name>/deploy/jboss-web.deployer/server.xml and add a Context element under Host.(Step similar to standalone TC)

Well, there is something about your environment or configuration that is causing this, but at this point I have run out of ideas of what it could be. I have asked every question I can think of.

You say you cannot even access the file on your local development machine. I gave you the full path for my PDF file, and also the URL I used to successfully access it. Could you supply the same information for your development machine?

Based on the PDF file's location, and the way you start the app server, entering http://localhost:8080/test.pdf into the browser's address bar and hitting enter should cause the PDF to be downloaded (or opened, depending on the browser you are using and the browser's configuration). Heck, I even just now checked with Explorer and Chrome, my earlier attempt was with Firefox. All three worked.

For now, let's try to get this working on just your development machine; once that is working we will go back to www.mydomain.com.

Have you made any changes to any of the files that came with 4.2.3?

Could you try using a clean installation of 4.2.3 in another location (say at c:\temp\jboss-4.2.3.GA)? Deploy only the test.pdf file - do not deploy your app.